Code samples and hints

Wireshark® is a network protocol analyzer. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network. It has a rich and powerful feature set and is world's most popular tool of its kind. It runs on most computing platforms including Windows, OS X, Linux, and UNIX.

Any time you use a background image you can check the PhoneLightThemeVisibility resource and switch between different versions of the image to provide the best experience with either Black or White text.

SharpSerializer is an open source serializer for .NET Framework and .NET Compact Framework. It's purpose is simple and quick object serialization from A to B, without security considerations. SharpSerializer can a lot more than the built-in XMLSerializer and does it simpler. It can serialize to XML such types as a generic dictionary, multidimensional array, nested array/array of array, polymorphic/inherited objects.

This package contains a set of 64 app bar icons that you can use when developing applications for Windows Phone. In addition to the 64 icons in PNG format (32 dark and 32 light), this package also contains vector versions.

Working with an on-screen keyboard has never been easier with a windows phone. It’s very context sensitive so when you click on a text box it automatically zooms in to the text box and opens up the on-screen keyboard unit.

When you place a TextBox control on-screen and it has focus a Software keyboard for the touchscreen will pop-up. It’s important to be able to customize that keyboard to the types of input the user will be placing in that textbox with the Windows Phone, you can specify the input scope, which determines the keyboard layout for the software input panel (SIP). This provides the user with easy access to the expected input characters based on the application context.

Here are some of the common SIP layouts and the associated values that you specify in XAML or in application code.

Icon Buttons UI Best Practices

Icon images should use a white foreground on a transparent background using an alpha channel. The Application Bar will colorize the icon according to the current style settings and colored icons can cause this effect to display unpredictably.

The circle displayed on each Icon Button is drawn by the Application Bar and should not be included in the source image.

Icon images should be 48 x 48 pixels in size. The white foreground graphic for the button should fit in a 26 x 26 area square in the center of the image so that it does not overlap the circle.

Do not use an Icon Button for a back button that navigates backwards in the page stack. Windows Phones are required to have a dedicated hardware back button that should always be used for backward navigation.

Use Icon Buttons for the primary, most-used actions in your menu. Some actions are difficult to convey with an icon. If this is the case, you should using a Menu Item instead.

Choose icons that have clear meanings when the Application Bar is rotated. The Application Bar automatically handles changes in screen orientation. When the device is in a landscape orientation, the menu is displayed vertically on the side of the screen. The icon buttons are rotated so that they appear upright to the user, but the order of the icons in the list is not changed. It is possible for icon meanings to be confused when this occurs, particularly if two of the icons are mirror images of each other along the Y axis.